Tend To Be

For years, the green vines in the backyard sprawled, and climbed over the fence, occupying territories that were once somebody else's property. The dogs at home, in their unleashed collar, always went on a brawl when Igaras Caeffur left them untied to the big pine trees on either sides.

Caeffur got calls everyday, almost everyday. There were days when he had heard the phantom ringtones deafening his insignificant ears. And no one, absolutely no one had called, and the phone stayed in boredom for the whole day. Those were the days when Igaras Caeffur would started to get anxious about things. He would pave around in his house with his narrow selections of beach pants, and his upper body naked. And he would soon get worked up with all sort of house cleaning tasks that he felt a caged animal raging inside him, which he would promptly rush to the pool and cool himself down. But his eyes would always reach over to the screen of his phone, checking to make sure he didn't missed any call.

This phone he had, it could only receive calls. So every call he got, could possibly be the last call in his life, if he was to think so negatively. There wasn't a bright side living out here in the middle of a desert with a fluctuating population and unstable connections for outside communication. And the only thing for Caeffur that seemed to look up, which was months ago, had began to act weird. It was the power generator.

The Military promised to drop supplies every two weeks when Igaras Caeffur and others were evacuated here for safety measures. And as years passed, the drops began to go thin, and the timing often changes. Two people had been killed from the crates falling from the sky, and the military didn't seem willing to take up the responsibility.

Caeffur used to be one of them, all suited up and ready for whatever wars and battles that was coming for his country. Until the radiation leakage happened and almost everyone he knew had to be relocated to somewhere in the desert. He had tried to run away in the first few month, but every time he thought he was out of the zone, he would see the sand walls that surrounded the inner city where he lived, and he would return, and told kids in the hospital of the imaginative creatures he encountered in the depth of the sand. Kids used to love him, for his charm and the stories that he had to tell, and mostly his great long beard that would rustle in the wind.

It'd been five years and three months since they were exposed to the radioactive waste, and many had given their lives to it. The remaining survivors had less and less of the past to talk about, the distant memory faded, the once familiar voices disappeared.

Under the request of people, mobile phone with sophisticated connections to the satellite were distributed to the citizen. Many broke down crying and drowned in happiness when they had heard voices of their friends and families that were not affected in the incidents.

Caeffur received no calls the first day. Everyone he knew had died a horrible death, and he was, at a time, completely lonely.

Then calls from people he doesn't know started to place in. And when he told people that they had called a wrong number, they would typically reply, "do you mean this isn't the Smithsonian office hotline?"

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Papa Jones & Sally Francis Jones

Papa Jones had not always had a big heart. Now that he did, he had no doubt that his daughter, Sally Francis Jones, would run around telling their neighbors and her girlfriends about the luxury suite he would be staying at the St. Clare Hospital for Elders. It was the very first thing Papa Jones could think of when Doctor North broke the news to him, after his health report was retrieved from a pile of medical waste due to a human error. Which was safe to say that the recently hired nurse, Gwen Tracy, would not outlast the previous two nurses in St. Clare. Talk about longevity in an elderly hospital.

For a brief moment, Papa Jones could hear nothing Doctor North was saying to him, as he began to remember Sally Francis Jones' red cheeks under the summer sun, and Sally Francis Jones' soft, long blonde hairs in the candle light. He did not, for one second, think of his two late wives, but the daughter of his mistress.

Sally Francis Jones is a miracle.

When Sally Francis Jones first came into Papa Jones' then hairy arms, she giggled melody of dreams in nights, and sobbed tunes of nightmares during days. It was horrible. So horrible that Papa Jones had to hire a professional to take care of her, immediately after the Agency for Nannies had opened in the morning. It was there when Papa Jones felt his inner peace had returned, that his ears no longer chant the acoustic Soviet Union national anthem.

That was almost six years ago. Today, Sally Francis Jones is not an infant that sucks milk from a plastic bottle anymore. She's grown up into a little miss, and has a bedroom to herself.

"How much time do I have left, Doctor North, Conservatively?" Papa Jones coughed, "Look at me. Do not lie to an old man."

Doctor North didn't look directly into Papa Jones' grey eyes, instead he raised his left hand and showed two fingers.

"Two years? That's not bad news at all. That's fantastic. Maybe I'll still be walking after two years," Papa Jones smiled. "Who knows?"

Papa Jones was about to stand up and give Doctor North a handshake when the opposite head shook lightly.

"Two months then? That's plenty of time for a pre-funeral memorial. I'd like to hear what people have to say about me. After all, I'd be too dead to hear," Papa Jones cracked into a laughter and his face flared up in flame.

"You don't have two years or two months. You have two days. After that, you'll probably, you know," Doctor North said, staring at the report.

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